Think and Grow Rich (Ch 2)
Napoleon Hill
Watch The Video Summary of Think and Grow Rich
Transcript
I do want to welcome everybody to this episode of the Wealth Creation Mastermind – The Curriculum. We’re into exercise Number 8, which is “Think and Grow Rich.” And we’re into the second chapter, which is the chapter on desire. You know, Chris Pelegrin was just mentioning, saying geez, you know, John, you’ve got what everybody wants, you’ve got the time freedom, you’ve got the money freedom. But here’s the sad truth, Chris, and that is, the way I mark when I started reading this book was I read it the day that my middle daughter was born and she just turned, I think like 40 years old this year. So, I actually read this book the first time for 40 years, but it took me many years before I started applying it.
But when I read that book, I’ve been fired from my job the day before. I had more month at the end of you know, less money than month every month. I hadn’t paid my taxes for two years, I had no money in the bank, and every night I went to bed sweating. How am I going to pay my bills? How am I going to put food on the table? How am I going to keep a roof over my kids’ heads? And I attribute everything that has happened since then to this creative method of thought and it does start with a burning desire. Desire is truly the starting point of all achievement. And you have to want it. You have to want it now. You have to see it big, and you’ve got to have an absolute decision that you’re going to own it, you know, the world is going to be in the palm of your hands. And to achieve anything you got to have that fire in your belly, right?
Look, everybody wants more, right? Everybody goes, Oh yeah, I‘d love to have a little bit more money. I’d love to have a little bit more freedom, but see, that’s a wish or a prayer. There’s a difference between a wish and a desire. Desire combines with decision, you know, it’s like sort of that I’m going to have this, you know, it’s not I want it, I hope I can get it is. It’s really man, it’s pulsating and it just burns through everything else, and it’s extremely specific. When you start saying I want it, well what do you want, when do you want, how badly, what is exactly does it look like?
I got a picture of an Aston Martin up here right now. So this does happen to be a DB11, right? It’s not an Aston Martin 177. It’s not a vintage. It’s a DB11. So it’s not, hey, I want an Aston Martin. What year, what color is the interior? Which sport package do you have on it? Which exhaust system do you have involved? Which transmission? I mean, you got to see yourself sitting in it, driving it, feeling and smelling it, you know, you got to get just emotionally involved with whatever your desire is and it’s got to be pinpoint accurate. And I’m not saying that money is the only thing. My burning desire is I will build a wealth creation mastermind, 1 million strong by January of 2020. Specifically for the purpose of leading others into the lives of freedom and meaning and purpose, filled with physical, intellectual and spiritual abundance by following these creative methods and applying them to building multiple streams of passive income. Very specific, I see the team. So you specify it, you get a determined to have it, you see yourself in possession of it.
And it’s like one of the greatest conquerors in history, he did something that was absolutely extraordinary. Hernán Cortés sailed from Spain in 1521. He sailed through, you know, it’s now called Cuba, stopped at Cuba. Now here’s something many people don’t understand. The governor of Cuba was dead set against Cortés. He was undermining Cortés at every step of the way, all the way to the point that he actually got generals underneath Cortez that were undermining him, trying to mute him. So what Cortez did, he sailed to the east coast of Mexico, down by the Yucatan Peninsula. He offloaded, he had 500 soldiers on board, 500 other conquerors, and they were up against an Aztec army in the hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands against 500. So you know what he did? He lined up all his 500 soldiers on the beach, set fire to all of his ships burned every one of them to the waterline, sunk them all, turned back to his soldiers and says, “winter parish, conquer this land, or we die trying.”
Now, fortunately, none of us have to make that kind of commitment in getting what we want out of life, but what you do have – every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to burn your ships and cut all sources of retreat. You’ve got to draw a line in the sand and it’s got to be a real one. It’s like this little gold fish here. Man, this little guy has got a plan, right? He’s not hoping for a bigger tank. He’s making it happen, right? He’s not wishing “I’d like to swim a little bit more.” He’s going, I got a plan, I got a state of mind, I’m going to make it happen. Boom. He jumps out of that little tank and he’s landing in the big one. Woo. He’s in the gravy now, right? So it’s that burning obsession, the desire, you’ve got to have a specific state of mind, and as you get into this material, you realize the magic is that it’s all mental and we have complete control over all of that.
So you know, you’ve got to have a definite plan. You’ve got to have a way of acquiring riches and you’ve got to back those plans with persistence, with an attitude that you don’t recognize failure and, you’re going to get what you want. Now, this is where the rubber meets the road – this right here. See what Napoleon Hill is doing in the preface to the book, in a word from the author, he says, “this book is practical, not theoretical”. What he’s saying is; when he gives you an exercise, take it seriously. This is the mistake guys I made when I first read Think and Grow Rich, until I started actually doing what he said, I did not start to get the results that I’ve generated, that I do have now, but it’s all as a result of doing it. We can program our subconscious mind, and this is the secret of how to do it. This is a method where you can turn your desire for riches and transmute that desire into its physical financial equivalent, and there are 6 steps, right? So, do this. Absolutely, don’t let this one slip by you.
Number 1; what you do is you fixing your mind the exact amount of money that you want and it’s not just enough to say I want a lot of money; I want to have money coming in from multiple sources that are growing all the time right now. No. Say I want to have $100,000 bills. I want to have a stack of a million dollars. I want to put a million dollars into a trunk, right? Whatever it is that you want, see it. Then what you do is you say, okay, well how? How am I going to earn that money? What am I going to give in exchange?
Now what we’re doing here, this is a clue. You see in the magnifying glass, you’ve got 5 people, yourself and 4 others. What we say in the wealth creation mastermind, take personal responsibility for bringing in 4 others. John, congratulations, you’ve got Cammy and somebody else with you tonight. That’s awesome, you know. And Dick, congratulations, you got John, you’ve got Cheryl, you’ve got another John. So this is the way it works because 4 who find 4 is 16. 16 who find 4 is 64. 64 who find 4 is 256. 4 to the 10th power is a million. How do we build a team of a million? By teaching 4 people the creative method of thought and helping them find 4 others, who learn and apply the creative method of thought. So what are you going to give? What you’re going to give is more use values and you’re charging in monetary value.
Step 3; fix it and the stone. By January of 2020, I will have a team 1 million strong in the Wealth Creation Mastermind. So fix it, be specific, and hold yourself accountable to it.
Forth; this is critically important, this is where you really use your inductive capacity. You create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and you begin right away. Now, here’s the great news. By your being here and the wealth creation mastermind, you can actually ride along with us. We will actually provide you with a plan for total financial freedom. You get on the Tuesday night call. Monday is about getting your mind set. Tuesday is about getting financial freedom done. Get money done. And so we actually have the plan will help you devise it.
Step 5 is; you write a clear, concise statement of the amount of money that you intend to acquire, you name the time limit for it, you state what you intend to give in return for it, and you described very clearly the plan through which you’re going to accumulate it. So, get on the Tuesday night call and then we’ll help you actually write your plan and then this is really critically important. Use your own voice, vocalize it, first thing upon arising, “I am so happy and grateful now that I am.” Bam! Your written statement. Right before you go to sleep at night, “I am so happy and grateful now that I am,” and your written statement.
And pretty soon what’s going to happen is you’re going to memorize it, it’s going to be internalized and what you do is you actually begin to imagine yourself in possession of the things you want. I mean I told you when I started, I was deep underwater and yet I wanted to have a sailboat for crying out loud. Well, you know, I know what it takes to have a sail boat. I’ve had three now, you know, and so you’ve got to be able to see yourself in possession. Can you imagine yourself as a millionaire? Can you see yourself in possession doing the things that you want to do? Right? You happen to get to go along with my dream and my vision because, you know, what I love and desire what moves and motivates me. You fill yours in with your own picture. Create your dream board, right? Take that seriously.
I mean, right above my computer screen, when I look at my wall, I see my dream board, “there’s my boat, there’s my team, there’s my house, there’s my private jet,” right; there’s my vineyard, wow those are some of the cars. I mean, I see it all. There’s my partner. I mean boom, boom, boom. It’s all right in front of me. So you know, do everything you can to foster a state of belief, a state of mind, and you’ve always got to be engaging in self-analysis.
What do you believe, you know, the successful application of these steps, these 6 steps calls for. You’ve got to have enough imagination to enable yourself to see and understand that the accumulation of that wealth can’t be left to chance. You know, you can’t just read the book and go, okay, I got it. No, you got to do the exercise. You got to train your mind. See, our minds are these monkey mind’s jumping around. You got to take responsibility for hitting that turning point where you make an absolute decision. Now, what do you think this jet pile and his thinking when he’s taken off from the rocking deck of an aircraft carrier, right? You think he’s thinking, oh, I hope I take flight. No. Man, he just made an absolute rock solid decision, I’m flying this thing. We’re going up, we’re taken off. And so it’s that burning desire to be, do and to have is the starting point where you begin to turn your dreams into reality, but you’ve got to take this material absolutely serious and no, no, no without question, without doubt and sometimes you’re going to have challenges.
Look, we are engaged in the greatest journey of our lives, and that’s the journey through our own mind. Believe me, we will hit roadblocks, we will hit stumbling blocks, we will hit obstacles because we’re dealing with something that has, you know, it’s truly the most magnificent but one of the most complex creations in all of the cosmos and that’s the human mind. You know, no one ever defeated though, until they admit defeat. The flip side of that coin is you’re never going to receive anything until you absolutely believe that you can have it.
However, you know, we are amazing beings because we can do. You know, Elon Musk right now, first of all, he dreamed of having, you know, replacing the internal combustion engine with all electric vehicles. Hey, I think he’s on his way to doing it. Now he’s dreaming on establishing a base on Mars and taking the race off planet. I mean these are our big dreams. What’s your dream? What’s your vision? What are you going to do with the wealth that we are going to help you create, so you can be, do and have anything that you want in your life? Do not dream small. Plan big, you know.
Thing that inspired me when I was down in Costa Rica is a sign from an architect by the name of Brody that said “make no small plans, they have no magic to stir men’s blood,” and it’s the truth. Dream big, paint a big vision, have a large plan for yourself. Step up, step out, make it happen. Through some strange and powerful principle of mental chemistry which is never fully divulged, nature wraps up in the impulse of strong desire that something which recognizes no such word as impossible and accepts no such reality as failure.
We are blessed to be at the forefront of creative thought. We are centers of thought and we can through our thoughts communicate with infinite intelligence and by impressing our thoughts upon formula substance, we can cause the things we think about to be created, and there are no limitations to the mind except those that we acknowledge, right? And just know that either poverty or prosperity are both the offspring of our own personal thought.
Look, we’re not infinite. There’s only one infinite supreme being. We are here. We are temporal. We’ve got this opportunity. What are we doing right now? All you have is now. You don’t have tomorrow. You don’t have yesterday. Tomorrow’s not here yet, yesterday’s already gone. What are you doing right now? If you’re awake, take action. It doesn’t matter if you’re ready or not. Take action. Take steps. Move forward beyond the call tomorrow night.
Look, for next week continue. We are learning the knowledge of and the application of the creative method of thought and action so that we can be, do and have whatever we want in life, and then we’re paying that forward to change the race together. Next week we’re into chapter 3 – Faith visualization of and belief in the attainment of desire. Look, step 1, you got to learn to think in a certain way and that’s why we’re reading and studying and deeply contemplating. We’re repeating our affirmations. We’re programming our subconscious mind. I commend you for being subscribed the wealth creation mastermind.
Look, when the newsletter comes out on Friday morning at 7:00 AM, Mountain Time, open it up. Watch the 20 minute replay. If you’re watching this live on Monday night, you’re only getting, you’re only retaining 7% of this information. Watch it again, reread the chapter, go back through this over and over and over and over again. You know be on the Monday curriculum, be on the Tuesday financial freedom, and then learn to act in a certain way.
First of all, decide exactly – who are you? Who do you intend to be? What are you going to be, do and have? Look, we’re on the physical plane that takes money. How much? Identify multiple streams of passive income that allow you to do it and then began to take action daily to execute your plan. Be on the call tomorrow night. Congratulations. I commend you for being the wealth creation mastermind. You and I are going to change the world together.
Thank you!
John Rogers is a former Wall Street portfolio manager and served as CEO of Premium Enterprises and President of The Colorado Tire Recycling Center. He transitioned to digital marketing, founding WealthCreationMastermind.com to empower home-based entrepreneurs with cutting-edge strategies. Creator of the “Mastering the Art of Wealth Creation” online course, John has driven significant growth in network marketing, achieving the Blue Diamond rank and earning the title of Univera Associate of the Year in 2015. His expertise in leveraging technology for financial success transforms how entrepreneurs achieve their business goals.